Nick Origlass, a central figure in the history of the Trotskyist movement in Australia, died on May 17 at the age of 88 with more than 60 years of political activity on the side of the working class behind him.

New Zealand Alliance leader Jim Anderton outlined a bold plan to rescue the country’s remaining unsold pine plantations at the party’s national conference, held in Wellington April 6-7. A week prior to the conference, the National Bolger government had announced its intention of selling the vast North Island forests off to the highest bidder.

The Communist Party of Australia developed a strong base in important industrial unions during the 1930s. As the depression eased, CPA members recruited from the unemployed and trained in action through the struggles of the Depression, had got jobs in industry. This working class base, which became the core of the CPA, grew and was consolidated during the 1940s.

The Communist Party of Australia experienced its most rapid growth in the years 1930-1934, going from 300 to 3000 members. The misery and desperation of the depression years, with up to one third of the work force unemployed, pushed many to look for radical solutions.

Ten years after the Russian Revolution that was the inspiration for the formation of the Communist Party of Australia, much had changed in the Soviet Union. Bureaucratism was rampant, Lenin was dead, and Stalin was rapidly pushing aside many of the old Bolshevik leaders. The first workers state had survived, but at a cost.

On October 30, 1920, the Communist Party of Australia was founded at a meeting in Sydney attended by 26 men and women. They represented the most radical of the small socialist groups, militant trade union activists and officials and former members of the Industrial Workers of the World. Their direct inspiration was the Russian Revolution of October 1917 led by Lenin’s Bolshevik party, the first example of workers overthrowing capitalism, taking power in their own hands and setting out on the path of constructing socialism.

Seventy-five years ago, under the impact and inspiration of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, the Communist Party of Australia was founded. It was a modest beginning, but an historic event. The CPA formed in 1920 finally dissolved in 1991, but for most of its life it was the dominant party on the left in Australia and an important force in the workers movement. There are many proud chapters in its history – the numerous trade union struggles led; organising the unemployed, women, Aborigines, young people; important civil liberties fights; and solidarity with international struggles, in Spain, Indonesia, Vietnam, South Africa and East Timor, to name a few.

For years they’ve been telling us we live in the Lucky Country. It’s now official. Each Australian – man, woman, child – is now worth $1.1 million, according to the World Bank. Its recent study estimating the wealth of 192 countries put Australia at the top of the list.

One of the traditions on which Direct Action built is that of the old Industrial Workers of the World, who were the first publishers of a paper with this name in Australia. The IWW was formed in Chicago in 1905, and by the outbreak of WWI was well established in Australia. The IWW – otherwise known as the Wobblies – set out to be an industrial union uniting all workers in the struggle against the bosses. But it was also a revolutionary organisation based on a dedicated membership preaching the doctrines of all-out class struggle and the fight for a new social order.

Since the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP) leadership’s attempt to cut the living standards of working people at a single blow in June 1976, Poland has been living through a new crisis. The most obvious, daily symptoms of this crisis are economic and social: rising prices, chronic and acute shortages, especially of agricultural produce, a severe energy shortage, dislocations in industry, great strain on the social services – the housing shortage, shortages of medical supplies – heavy indebtedness to the bankers of the capitalist West, and so on.